“The girl was clearly on some horrible combination of drugs. Her pupils were massive and her hand unsteady as she poured wine into my mouth. I could smell cocaine on her breath and she had the sheen of amphetamines around her. She was a prostitute, taken to the club by the greasy 50-something Italian half her height called ‘Gio’. Naturally, I took her for a dance. Or, more accurately, she took me for a dance. The moment I’d sat on her she started trying to touch me, so I backed off. She bent over, slapped her arse, and lifted her top up to show me her large breasts. When I delivered her back to her Italian ‘Gio’, he offered me £500 to make out with her while he beat himself off.
“There were a lot of drugs in the club that night. Every customer I spoke to looked like they were fresh from a line. They drifted into the clubs offering me money. ‘How much to lick your belly button out?’ one asked. Another pleaded ‘how much for a ten second snog? Come on, just let me kiss you… £100!’”
Ivy* is not your average York Uni student. Whilst most of us spend our evenings partying and drinking away our student loan, Ivy is busy earning enough money to pay her way through university in a job that is unusual to say the least. As she speaks exclusively to Vision, Ivy appears a refreshing contradiction to the stripper stereotype. In fact, she perhaps has a lot more common sense, independence, and even dignity than a number of York students.
“The mental picture most people have of strippers is a girl who got ‘forced’ into stripping by an abusive boyfriend or pimp to support an A-Class drug habit,” explains Ivy, “Who not only takes her clothes off but willingly encourages all sorts of debauchery to be carried out on her helpless, abused and exploited body.” Instead, Ivy’s journey up until now has been far more innocent. Born into a liberal family, Ivy had a natural precocity and left home at 14 to pursue independence.
From an early age she was body confident. As Ivy recounts her past, her frank admissions are told with no embarrassment, a virtue that has held her in good stead for her job. “I guess that an early sign I’d be a stripper was that I used to do naked dances around the changing room at school with my friends when I was about six. I didn’t have any body issues then,” she explains, “When I got a bit older I went through the self-conscious stage as all teens do. I had bulimia and anorexia for a bit, but I didn’t ‘suffer’ from it. Even when I wasn’t comfortable with my body I have never been that modest about it.”
Although she may feel comfortable in herself, the negative connotations have prevented Ivy from telling those closest to her, “I once jokingly asked my mother what she would say if I was a stripper, she just giggled and told me she had played a stripper at university. I wouldn’t want them to feel bad about not being able to help me out at university. I don’t think they would understand that. Whilst I could get another job, I prefer this one. I love my job but I realise this is hard for other people to understand.”
Only a handful of friends know the truth. Even her boyfriend is unaware of her ‘other life’. “If I tell him, and he doesn’t like it – will I stop? I can’t afford to. I need the money. So I will have to end the relationship or end my studies at University. But what if I tell him and he doesn’t mind? Then I want to know why he doesn’t mind, why is he not jealous? It’s unfair on him either way.”
Ivy is keen to explore the public perception of strippers, “Nobody seems to know a stripper. Nobody knows who these people are, these girls who have so much self confidence they can not only get naked in front of a group of men, but actually expect money for doing so. Yet it is one of those things that people feel they have a right to an opinion”
“Essentially we’re saleswomen, except instead of cars we’re selling our tits in your face. This means we have to be confident at work. We are comfortable in our bodies; I’ve yet to meet a stripper with an eating disorder. We know what we want: money, and we know how to get it: the ‘hustle’ or ‘sale’ part. Yet most of us bite our lip when people talk about stripping. We can’t dispel this image without first admitting to it.”
Ivy has experienced the real world more than most. Whilst she claims innocence herself, the industry is often not far from the seedy underworld portrayed in the media.
Unsurprisingly, Ivy admits that drugs are rife, “I worked in a sort of ‘ghetto’ club for a bit – everyone thought they were a gangster. There were a lot of drugs. There’s a pretty high correlation between the amount of drugs and the amount of ‘extras’ girls offer. I guess as girls get more desperate for drugs they resort to more than dancing.”
These ‘extras’ are inevitable in Ivy’s line of work; “prostitution is always going to be a factor in strip clubs. Before I started I promised I would never accept money for any sexual act. I was offered £100 for a ten second kiss and turned it down, I was offered £1,500 once to have sex with a BBC executive, I turned it down. In this job you have to know what you feel comfortable with and stick to it. But, some girls will give a number out to a guy and meet them after work in a hotel room.”
When listening to these stories of prostitution, drugs and seedy characters it’s easy to forget that Ivy is still a student. Lectures and lap dances are an unusual combination and for Ivy, it was tough at the beginning. “When you first start you get carpet burns on your knees, bruises from the pole, and blisters from the shoes. When I first started I found I was so tired from work that I would get in, go to bed, then sleep till it was time to wake up and go to work again. This was not good for my studies!” But she soon learnt the art of multitasking, “If I’m on the floor at 9, I normally cram a couple of hours work in just waiting for the first customer if it’s a slow night. Sometimes the girls help test me.”
The work schedule is not the most accommodating for university work. “It’s nine to five. Only, when you’re going to bed, I’m waking up to go to work. Lunch for me is a midnight snack. Normally the girls get a kebab at the end of the night.”
But the punishing hours are more than made up for by a healthy flow of cash all night. “You make as much as you want to on a night. You just laugh harder at the bad jokes, and ask for dances sooner if you want more. Sometimes you can’t be bothered and just want to chat shit to the DJ or bouncer for a few, these aren’t entirely counter-productive as these people also have a lot to do with your money. Bear in mind that you pay the house fees for working there. This can be either a percentage of what you earn or a flat sum between £25-40 depending on the club and location. In some clubs if you don’t make the house fee in a night you go home with a loss. So you’d better make at least the effort for that. How much you earn depends a lot on the club as well. I worked in a club where the card machine was broken so I was never able to earn over £500 in a night. That was a bit annoying.”
The money plays a decisive factor in Ivy’s enthusiasm to work. But it’s not just monetary gains that keeps her satisfied. “Since I’ve been stripping I’ve learned not to put up with crap from people, I’ve learned to be comfortable in my body, to make people feel good about themselves and to feel good about myself. At the same time I am paying off my student debt.” Throughout the interview, Ivy constantly surprises. An articulate stripper, confident and assertive, who offers an unexpected and candid insight into an industry shrouded in taboo.
It would be easy to sensationalise the story of a York student ‘forced’ to strip for a good education,. Yet Ivy, is keen to play this down. “There is a ‘desperate girl’ image to stripping. The girl who needs the money to support her drug habit. But, I need the money to support my education” Ivy explains, ” I am paying off my University debt and working flexible hours in a job I love. Most of the strippers I know are similar: we have a goal in mind and if that means financially exploiting a few men by giving them the impression that we like them than no harm done.”
And, whilst a lot of us are fretting over the dwindling job market, Ivy seems to have found the ideal solution; “I’ve met lots of girls who started stripping to pay their way through university and carried on after they had graduated; there isn’t another job which pays nearly as well.” Perhaps it’s time to have a career rethink?
* Ivy’s name has been changed to protect her identity.